Providence of God: President Lincoln Establishes Thanksgiving

Maybe he just got it wrong. After all, the opposition made lewd accusations about him. They hated him, hurled vicious insults at him and called him delusional. He was from the confederate state of Kentucky, married to a confederate wife, whose family actually fought for Jefferson Davis, yet the opposition still protested his election. They started a great civil war over his presidency, because President Abraham Lincoln abhorred the very-common practice of enslavement, something that is still prevalent around the globe, today. So maybe our 16th President of the United States of America just got it wrong when proclaiming “the fourth Thursday of every November” be officially recognized, “with dutiful prayer, as a day of Thanksgiving, under God.” President Lincoln made the proclamation, establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday, just months after the Battle of Gettysburg: a devastating victory, wrought with unparalleled military bloodshed, changing the outcome of the war and thus the future of our country, to favor “the right to life, liberty and property” for all humanity.

Perhaps most importantly to note is that the rights recognized by the 14th Amendment after the Civil War, and signed into law by President Lincoln, were not just for some; whether based on size, age, gender, color or creed. President Lincoln made every person sovereign, equal in rights to any other sovereign entity; including any state or even a country. These are called our individual rights, which so much bloodshed obtained.

Considered one of the greatest speeches in American history, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address on this day in 1863. What does this speech mean to you? Did you have to memorize it in school? Have you ever visited @GettysburgNMP? Share your story with us! pic.twitter.com/A7DAzXuGPX

Franklin Roosevelt seemed to think President Lincoln was wrong, and might have even referred to President Lincoln as a “bitter-clinger.” Like other Lincoln-policies, FDR amended the actual date of Thanksgiving, changing it from its original date, on “the fourth Thursday,” to “the third Thursday of each November.” Socially-engineering more shopping by the people, it was FDR’s attempt of boosting his failed economic policy, which crashed the market of the roaring twenties, instead using government authority to exert power over the people’s free-will while manipulating the free-market. It was meant to benefit corporate America’s profit margin, and the federal government’s tax-revenue-margin, alone. The only party left with less “revenue margin” would be the American people, themselves.

Roosevelt was finally overturned by a determined Congress, one understanding that traditional American values matter. So Congress itself re-established the original date set forth by America’s founding father: President George Washington. The day of Thanksgiving was to be celebrated on the 26th day, then the fourth Thursday of November, once again.

President Washington had originally recognized a day for Thanksgiving under God during his first term in office; on October 3rd, 1789. Seventy-four years later, and at the behest of Sarah Josepha Hale (a seventy-four year old magazine editor), President Abraham Lincoln officially proclaimed on October 3rd, 1863 that the fourth Thursday of every November become a national day of Thanksgiving. One celebrated in dutiful prayer and thanks be to God for our blessings, one and all. The intention was to acknowledge God, to acknowledge our exceptional American history, as birthed in independence through “divine providence.”

General Washington believed our independence attained was the will of God, achieved by outgunned and outnumbered colonial farmers fighting against the largest military on the planet. A united America (north, south, east, west) was the first to ever achieve independence from the tyranny of the British Empire, and in doing so, recognizing that natural rights are endowed by God. Our rights are not granted by a government (local, state, or federal) who could just as easily take them away, as present them.

To those merely “pranking” his legacy, and others too cowardly to stand firm (in places like liberalized, Virginia), President George Washington must have been wrong too. Maybe to radical atheists, freedom for all is wrong. Thank God none of us have to agree with them. It is also noteworthy, that when united, America remains an undefeated country, with freedom as its priority. This fact must serve to enrage the same protesting both our founding, and our endowed rights under God, to no end.

An atheist would also feel unsafe and unwanted in the same church. Would the church close it’s doors then to satisfy https://t.co/7z8JX79fBm

My wife, children and I began our own Thanksgiving tradition in 2016. Now, President Lincoln’s proclamation of Thanksgiving is read before any and all Thanksgiving festivities begin. You see, instead of tearing down the traditions of any other families, we instead built our own tradition, satisfying our own family. Consistent with history, and to no surprise at all, certain protesters have yet to return to our table to give thanks to God, and acknowledge our shared history. It’s our Read family way of saying thanks be to God, to acknowledge one another, and to always remember what our ancestors endured, achieving our freedom and independence from government empires.

Read the following text, underneath the historic caption, for President Lincoln’s proclamation, marking the first federally recognized day of Thanksgiving. Contained underneath the proclamation is a video-embed of the speech given by our 16th President of the United States of America, made while presenting the proclamation of Thanksgiving on October 3rd, 1863: seventy four years after President Washington first acknowledged Thanksgiving under God & done so at the behest of a seventy four year old magazine editor.

Proclamation 106—Thanksgiving Day, 1863

October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans. mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A. D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.